Singida

British Commonwealth Postmarks

Attached are lists of villages and other offices where you may find a circular date stamp. Well, most are circular and almost all are dated. The lists are loosely arranged as follows:

Name as it appears in an early cancel or in the majority of cancels. Many town names, especially in Africa and Asia, have a number of spellings in English. These are ignored. But, if the town name changed significantly, the newer name is in parentheses. Names often changed because of confusing same or similar names in the same colony.

Also, independence led to de-Anglicization, especially if the town name included words such as "fort". If the town is a post office outside of the colony but administered by the colony, that is indicated.

Next is the earliest date "known" of a dated cancel or, sometimes the date of opening. If not from literature, then from my collection. Sadly, most early dates from my collection are not that early.

Then there are letter or numeral killers used alone or in conjunction with a date stamp. Sometimes several different numbers were used, perhaps in different styles. This is a huge field, only touched on here.

Lastly, the location of the village is given (or will later be given) by latitude and longitude. Sometimes this is only approximate, variables including inaccurate old maps, inaccurate new maps, moving of towns, confusion over similar town names, quirky software and my own clerical errors.

The lists are a place to get started. They are incomplete, the degree depending on what literature is available to the author. Focus is on villages with post offices around the turn of the century without attempting to include newer offices. The cut-off date for each colony varies, depending on manageability of the number of offices.

Many of the village marks are rare. Occasionally, only a single example is known. Some offices were open only a few months and have disappeared from modern maps.

Karatu pioneer missionary dies in US

Pastor ElderJackson, a former missionary with the Karatu Lutheran Church died at the age of 88 on Saturday, November 29, this year at the Benedictine Living Community in St. Peter, Minnesota, US.

A Memorial service was held on Friday, December 5 and was attended by former missionaries and friends. Burial was conducted in Resurrection Cemetery, St Peter.

Jackson was born on February 21, 1920 in Rosholt , South Dakota and attended West Central School of Agriculture before joining Augustana Seminary in Rock Island Illinois. He was ordained Lutheran Pastor in 1948. Jackson served as Pastor in Wheaton Minnesota for one year then became Missionary in Tanzania and Kenya for thirty six years.

The late Reverend Jackson served Lutheran Church in coffee Plantations at Oldeani before he moved to Karatu in 1954 after the Lutheran mission had acquired land from a South African family, Chris Hitchcock

He is most remembered in Karatu area for establishing primary schools in villages, then known as bush schools and building houses of worship. However, in 1959, They needed to move to Singida area to continue with their mission work because his wife Renee Jackson was allergic to Karatuís volcanic dust.

He is survived by his wife, Renee, seven children, 18 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

The welcome in Tanzania

"Well, Horst's worm is gone, I had more, smaller ones, but they are also gone. We look fantastic - from the back. We've lost a lot of weight but our faces look ten years older. The sun is damn strong and the rain doesn't really want to come. We had a little but it stopped again. It's already a month late the people say. We are in Tanzania by the way.

The horses had a few minor problems still in Zambia. Trine's saddle sore needed a drain, Sambok had a stiff neck from the injection against Nagana, he and Misty had got mange (caused by mites), and Roland had an allergic reaction against I don't know what, his whole body was covered with pimples as big as a man's fist- but now they're are all fine.

The welcome in Tanzania was overwhelming. In Tunduma the children threw stones at us and yelled "Wazungu motherfucker, wazungu go home!!" At night they untied the horses and chased them away. It took us two hours to find them the next morning. I would have loved to follow their suggestion to go home, but the only number I had from someone in Tanzania who has to do with horses and might have been able to organize a transport for the horses was wrong. So we went on.

Tanzania is a very extreme country. People are either very polite or very rude. They are definitely all very complicated. One must report to the police, then to the village chairman, and then to the village executive officer to get permission to pitch a tent somewhere. And then it might still happen that you get chased away because you are in front of a school and the school director is a Muslim whereas the village chairman who allowed you to use this place is a Christian and hasn't talked to the director first.

And no one speaks English. I'm become almost perfect in stuttering Swahili. The children are plenty, very aggressive and completely uneducated. Women are only plenty and uneducated. They both get treated by the men like cattle, beaten with the stick, but it seems it is the only language they do understand. We are never alone, people are staring at us every second of the day. If we ask them to leave us alone they just make fun of us. The pepper-spray and the bullets of the pencil flair are almost gone, I wonder what we'll use against lions in the Serengeti but I'll rather be eaten by lions than refuse to react to the provocations of the children.

Today in Singida there were about 2000 people following us and for the first time someone tried to rob us. I had just unpacked the pepper-spray against the children when I turned around and saw a guy trying to pull down my saddlebag. He did me a favour by giving me a reason to offload all the aggression that has grown in the last weeks. He got a full load of the pepper-spray and afterwards I hit him with the whip across his face.

Now we are in something called a hotel. Well for Tanzania its luxury but in fact the best thing about it is the fence around it. Privacy for two days.

Well you see we have it quite funny here and we are not in the mood to give up any more after we have made it so far. I hope by Christmas we'll make it up to Karatu. There - we've heard - is the first tourist lodge. We are looking forward to spend Christmas and New Year in some sort of civilisation but one never knows how reliable information is in this country.

Well, enjoy your soft beds (we don't miss them), the TV (we don't miss it either), cool drinks (we miss them sometimes) and the possibility to close the door of your house or flat behind you and keep everyone outside - we miss that terribly.

All the best Esther and Horst"

The Long Riders' Guild sent a quick email to Esther and Horst to wish them well, and received the following response.

"Today, after a so-called continental breakfast: 2 pieces of bread and just enough butter for one piece, hot water and instant coffee, no milk, no jam, no tea and of course no cheese or anything like this, we feel already completely recovered again. One becomes modest in Africa.